Every
government puts value on preserving its history. That is why we have
national archives. Genealogy preserves history; the history of a
family. It cannot be done without access to records, just as historians
cannot preserve a nation's history without access to records. It is a
greater good than the right to privacy. It is a greater good than the
risk of identity theft.

Michael
Tobias Leaves JewishGenMichael
Tobias, Vice President—Programming for JewishGen, has left
JewishGen after more than 20 years of service as a volunteer and then
as a full-time staff member.

To me, Michael is a technical genius. I say that with some authority,
because I was one of the pioneers of the computer software industry,
having started programming computers in 1959 for IBM and continued for
34 years.

One particular incident comes to mind. The JewishGen Family Tree of the
Jewish People was still in its conceptual stage, and for some reason it
was decided to farm out its implementation to another software group.
After many months the group failed to implement the project, possibly
because they felt it was beyond their technical capacity. Michael took
the project from them and had the system running within 48 hours. It
was not a simple task. What you see today is, for the most part, what
Michael originally implemented.

Michael lives in Glasgow, Scotland. What continually amazes me was that
no matter what time of day I emailed him from the East Coast of the
U.S., I got a response within an hour or two.

Michael’s contribution to genealogy goes beyond JewishGen.
Have you ever used the Ellis Island search engine at the Stephen P. Morse site?
Michael participated in the implementation. He is, and will continue to
be, the senior technician of JRI-Poland. He is the senior researcher on
the International
Institute of Jewish Genealogy project “200 Years of
Scottish Jewry – a Demographic and Genealogical
Profile.”

Most importantly, Michael is a mensch; a person you want to have as a
friend and associate.

How
Did Ashkenazi Jews End Up With Famous Non-Jewish Last Names?Dr.
Alexander Beider, author of many name books published by Avotaynu, is
writing a monthly column for the Forward
newspaper located online and in New York. His latest
article is titled “How Did Ashkenazi Jews End Up With Famous
Non-Jewish Last Names?”

Dr. Beider notes that, “Because Jews in the Diaspora have
long been living as a minority among a non-Jewish majority, their names
often share similarities with those used by their non-Jewish
countrymen.” He adds that, “Many surnames describe
occupations, physical qualities or moral characteristics.”
Clearly these types of surnames can be shared by Jews and non-Jews.

New
Genealogy Website Has Index to 1897 Census of Ukraine OnlineA
new website, IndexingRoots, states it has online an index to the
Ukrainian portion of the 1897 census of Russia. Registration is
required to search the index. The registration process has the ominous
statement “IndexRoots may process my personal data for the
marketing purposes in accordance with the Privacy Policy.”
Reading the policy shows they conform to the European Union’s
GDPR privacy rules. To play safe, I used an email address reserved for
organizations from whom I do not want to receive future emails. The
disclosure statement indicated the site is run by Tomasz M. Jankowski
of Wroclaw, Poland.

They have a powerful search engine. I searched for any person named
Tartacki (my maternal father’s family) and they came up with
a result for a person name Tartotskiy on the 1897 census.

It is a fee-for-service site. To get additional information requires
paying a fee. The website is located at https://indexingroots.com.

Eight
Reasons You Cannot Find Anything About Our AncestorsThe Ancestor Hunt
has published an article that suggests eight reasons you cannot find
information online about your ancestors. The article is primarily of
value to persons who are just starting their family history research.
Veteran researchers might want to take a quick glance at the list to
confirm they have considered all the reasons.

One of the stated reasons is familiar to Jewish genealogists; the name
may be spelled differently. This is a common challenge to people
researching their Eastern European Jewish roots. The correct spelling
of my surname in Polish is Mokotow. Relatives living in Israel are
named Mokotov and in English- and Spanish-speaking countries, it is
invariably Mokotoff. Some years ago, I found that the Jews of Warsaw
pronounced it “Monkotoff.” I have found records
with that spelling variant.

Updates
to Jewish Genealogy Databases
A number of Jewish genealogy organizations have made major updates to
their databases.

JRI-Poland.
211,500 new or updated entries have been added to the JRI-Poland database,
bringing the total to 5.7 million. Plans call for linking search
results to digital images on the Polish State Archives
“National Digital Archive” and other websites.

Lodz.
50,000 names have been added to the Lodz Registration Cards
1916–1921. bringing the total to 180,000 Jewish names. It is
part of the JRI-Poland collection.

LitvakSIG.
32,594 have been added this quarter to the All-Lithuania Database of
LitvakSIG. They include conscription lists for Vilnius city and
suburbs, as well as for Sejny uyezd of Suwalki guberniya; family lists
for towns in the Zarasai district and the 1942 census of the Siauliai
ghetto. Also foreign passport applications for Vilnius city. The
All-Lithuania Database is located at https://www.litvaksig.org/search-ald/.

Gesher Galicia. Gesher
Galicia has added to the All Galicia Database information about 3,200
Jewish medical students. The database is located at https://search.geshergalicia.org/.
The current update includes records of 1,500 students and graduates
from Lwow University for the years 1894–1918.
Earlier this year, the indexes of Jewish medical students from Galicia
attending other universities were added:
• Jagiellonian University: Jewish medical
students and graduates (1802–1918)
• Jagiellonian University: Jewish
midwifery students (1802–1850)
• Pest University: Jewish Medical,
Surgical, and Midwifery Students (1793–1846)
• Pest University: Jewish Medical
Graduates (1770–1921)

FamilySearch
Adds 1.3 Million Records This Week A
list of recent additions to FamilySearch, 1.3 million indexed records,
can be found at https://tinyurl.com/FamilySearch121718.
This site provides direct links to the individual collections. They
include records from Colombia, French Polynesia, Germany, South Africa
and the U.S. states of North Carolina, Ohio and West Virginia.

Note that at the website, announced collections may not be complete for
the dates specified and will be added at some later date. Also note
that counts shown in the announcement are the number added, not the
total number available in the collection, which can be greater.

Clarification
on Documenting Jewish Cemeteries in Ukraine
The last issue of Nu?
What’s New? stated that the European Jewish
Cemeteries Initiative (ESJF) has published online a detailed survey of
Jewish cemeteries in the Volhyn region of Ukraine. Ron Doctor has
informed us that the report covers only modern Volhyn. Many towns of
historic Volhyn are not included in the report even though they are
shown on ESJF’s map. Doctor states that this
doesn’t diminish the work that ESJF is doing, but the
restriction to modern Volhyn should be more prominently noted. Doctor
is a board member and past coordinator of the JewishGen Ukraine Special
Interest Group.

Contribute
to the Success of the International Institute for Jewish Genealogy

Help
support a dynamic institution that in its brief existence already has
been the catalyst for
such benefits to Jewish genealogy as the Beider-Morse Phonetic
Matching System, Sephardic DNA and Migration project,
inventorying the Paul Jacobi Collection of 400 prominent
Ashkenazic lineages, the Proposed
Standard for Names, Dates and Places in a Genealogical Database, and a
system for Integrating Genealogical Datasets.

Visit
the
IIJG website at http://iijg.org
and read about these developments, as well as ongoing and
proposed projects.
Make
your tax-deductible contribution by credit card or PayPal at http://iijg.org. Click the
Donate link. If you prefer, mail a check to Avotaynu
Foundation, 794
Edgewood Ave., New Haven, CT 06515, USA. Make
the check payable to “Friends of
the International Institute for Jewish Genealogy.” Donations
are tax deductible for U.S. taxpayers.